1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer animation control techniques and more specifically to improved animation control techniques for the position and shape of cloth and other flexible surfaces.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventional animation has always been a labor intensive project. Having human effort create each and every image used to generate the animation allowed extensive control over how items to be animated appeared. The cost of the extensive control is paid in human labor. As more computers are used to generate animation, Human labor is minimized by using computer simulations to generate many of the frames embodying the animation.
Conventional computer simulation techniques for generation of animation are of two varieties, simple and complex. The complex techniques yield acceptable animation results but require large computational resources and may require several iterations to achieve the desired result. Simple techniques are computationally efficient and their results are crude and simple. Using simple simulation techniques may require many iterations to achieve a usable simulation from which a marginal animation may be generated.